Savanna AM Reflections, Day 2

Bonjour!
On Friday, my eyes were opened to the world of Connectivism and the ways in which encouraging technology as an academic connection tool can positively transform a classroom.  During the morning class session, I was intrigued at the way that we used TodaysMeet as I had never before considered a public chat room as a place for academic advancement.   I now believe that this could be a useful tool in a high school classroom, but I am still hesitant because it is so easy to quickly become off topic.  After Jeff showed us how he combined the collaborative note taking with a group chat (names attached) in a lesson for high school students, I became much more convinced of how the chat room would be productive in class.
Prior to this session, I had never heard of the SAMR Model of Tech Integration (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition). It took me a little bit to fully understand the differences between the levels, but they became much easier to determine after completing the group activity.
I completed a bit of research on the heutagogical academic approach that Jeff mentioned in class.  This student-centered approach emphasizes self-determination, which not only encourages an inner passion for the subject but also sets a student up for lifelong learning. I found an article (http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1076/2087) that explains heutagogy (self-determined learning) vs. andragogy (self-directed learning).  Technology plays an important role when discussing how to incorporate heutagogy in education, as social media enables heutagogy. I was surprised by the information below-- I wouldn't have expected higher GPAs to correlate with Twitter activity.

• Twitter: A recent study by Junco, Heiberger, and Loken (2010) showed that students who used Twitter (as compared to those who did not) were more actively engaged in their learning processes and had higher GPAs. Junco et al. (2010) also found that the use of Twitter boosted student-student and student-instructor interaction, as well as promoted active learning.